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UNBTED STATES OF A1V1EF5ICA 



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Sjje ^eatj) of 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 



APRIL 15, 1865. 



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iliic §ui\\ of f resiidcnt Lincoln. 



S E E M O I^ 



PREACHED IN 



ST. PETER'S CHURCH, ALBANY, N. Y., 



WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1865, 



EEV. WILLIAM T. WILSON, M. A., 

KECTOE. 




ALBANY : 

WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 

1865. 



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COEEESPO^DE^CE. 



Albany, April 19, 1865. 
The Rev. Wm. T. Wilson : 

Dear Sir — The undersigned, members of the vestry of St. Peter's Church, 
having listened with deep interest to the very appropriate and impressive dis- 
course delivered by you this morning, on the occasion of the funeral solemnities 
in honor of our late President, the lamented Abraham Lincoln, would earnestly 
request you to furnish them with a copy for publication ; and in making this 
request, they beg leave to assure you they express not less the general feeling 
of the congregation than their own. 

Very respectfully, your friends and parishioners, 

ORLANDO MEADS, JAMES KIDD, 

JOHN TAYLER COOPER, JOSEPH PACKARD, 

JOHN TWEDDLE, JESSE C. POTTS, 

HARMON PUMPELLY, WM. N. FASSETT, 

MOSES PATTEN, PHILIP TEN EYCK. 



St. Peter's Rectory, Albany, Api-il 20, 1865. 
Gentlemen: 

In reply to your kind note, asking for a copy of the sermon preached by me 
yegterday at St. Peter's Church, in commemoration of our late President, 
Abraham Lincoln, I have only to say, that I very cheerfully comply with 
your request. The sermon is a simple and hurried one, yet I am glad to print 
it as a poor, but heartfelt tribute to the memory of a good man. 

Yours very respectfully, 

WILLIAM T. WILSON. 

To THE Gentlemen of the Vestry of St. Peter's. 



®rber of Dioine Seruicc. 



The De Profundis: 
" Out of tlie deep have I called unto thee, Lord." — Choir. 

Sentences prom the Burial Office: 
" I am the Resurrection and the Life." 

The Lesser Litany: 
" O Christ, hear us." 

Anthem: from the Burial Office: 
' Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days." — Choir. 

Lesson : 1 Cor. xv, 20. 

Hymn 130. 
" Peace, troubled soul." — Choir. 

Sermon. 

Hymn 201 : 
"Who are these in bright array?" — Choir. 

Prayers from the Burl^ Office. 

Sentence from the Revelations : 
" I heard a voice from Heaven." — Alto Solo. 

Benediction. 



SEEMON. 



\ 



" Thou knowest not what a day may bring fortli !" 
What sad verification of the Wise Man's words has 
just come to us ! how sudden and appalling the dis- 
aster that has fallen upon the nation! Perhaps 
never before was the revulsion of feeling in a people 
greater; never before did a whole country pass 
instantaneously and at a single step from the height 
of exultation to the lowest depth of grief. These 
were to have been days of rejoicing. We were 
about to lift up our hearts in thanksgiving. All 
things conspired to make us glad. Victory, brilliant 
and unexampled, had just crowned our arms. The 
citadel of the Eebellion had fallen. That army 
which from the first had been its strong right arm 
had been shattered and taken. The nation's flag 
floated once again over all the principal cities of the 
South. The season in which we celebrate the Lord's 
Eesurrection promised to be made memorable in our 
annals by the restoration of public order and unity 



8 

and peace. The national integrity had been vindi- 
cated in four years of gigantic strife. The drum- 
beat, the call to arms, had ceased. The long agony 
and sacrifice, and sword and flame of war, were over 
and done. The veterans of many a hard-fought 
field were turning their expectant eyes toward home. 
Glad hearts were yearning to go forth and meet 
them. The former days were to return. The sword 
was to be exchanged for the plough-share, and the 
pruning-hook was again to replace the spear. 
Surely, never were a people on the eve of a 
greater or more exultant joy ! 

But in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, by 
the hand of an assassin, the great joy is dimmed 
by a great grief. Far and wide over the whole land 
the shock of this disaster falls. Everywhere you 
see it reflected in pale and horror-stricken faces. 
The preparations of jubilee are turned into the pre- 
parations of bereavement. The draped and half- 
hung flags attest the affliction of the people. The 
triumphal i)rocession gives way to the procession of 
mourners. The ovation becomes a funeral, and the 
Te Deum of victory sinks into the wail for the dead. 

It is the contrast of a week ! Thou knowest not 
what a day may bring forth ! But yesterday, as it 
seems, and we were listening to the merry peal of 



bells, and the boom of cannon, and the shouts of a 
multitude — and to-day it is the fimeral knell and the 
minute-gun ! A Nation sorrows for its great and 
honored Chief. 

There is something strangely pathetic, strangely 
tragic, both in the time and manner of this great 
man's death. He had been spared to his country in 
the hour of her trial, in the agony of her threatened 
dissolution, in all her sad passage through the valley 
of humiliation, only to be taken away in the first 
dawn of her returning and added greatness. His 
had been the most fearful responsibility under which 
man had stood in modern times — responsibility 
which had furrowed brow and cheek with ceaseless 
cares and great anxieties — and he was barely per- 
mitted to taste the rewards of a faithful stewardship 
in the commendation of his countrymen and of the 
world. N"© other man was so identified with the 
national crisis in which he lived. The position he 
occupied made him its Representative Man. Events 
had forced upon him that responsibility in which the 
only alternative was an immortality of honor or an 
immortality of shame. Perhaps, brethren, even now, 
we cannot fully realize what these fom' years past 
have been to this weary and heavy-laden man. 
There is little or nothing in our own experience to 

2 



10 

help us to it. However intense our interest in the 
struggle, ours has been only a private and individual 
responsibility. A nation's fate lay not in our keep- 
ing. Upon our every thought, and word, and deed, 
there has been no ceaseless and imposed constraint. 
How often has our speech been inconsiderate and 
rash ! We were not forced to weigh it. There has 
been no fearful, consuming, never-ending care which 
brought us weary days and sleepless nights. But 
upon the heart of this one man the gathered burden 
of the Nation was laid. The destiny of his Country 
was in his keeping. Upon his wisdom, patience, 
firmness, integrity, forbearance, and self-control, what 
mighty issues hung! He lived in the crisis of an 
hour when his every act must reach on, in its effect, 
to generations yet unborn. I do not wonder that 
the painter of the great picture in the Eotunda, has 
given to that face a sad, and worn, and weary look. 
What man could front such constant and weighty 
responsibilities and not look sad, and worn, and 
weary ? There must have been many hours in which 
he felt utterly alone, when the travail of his soul 
was in secret, when there was borne in ui)on him 
that bitter sense of solitariness which belongs to the 
Prophets of the Eace, which must be the lot of those 
who are intrusted with the destinies of nations. 



11 

It is scarcely possible that we private citizens 
should ever be just, during life, to our great public 
men. We cannot put ourselves in their position ; we 
cannot make the allowances that are due. It is so 
easy to criticise an act when the responsibility of that 
act is not brought home to you — so easy to over- 
look great qualities, and seize upon small defects of 
character. Sincerely and deeply as we all honor 
and mourn for him who is dead, perhaps there is no 
single one of us who has not at times spoken of him 
impatiently or harshly. I do not refer to this in the 
way of self-condemnation ; in the confusions and 
perjilexities of such a crisis it was almost inevitable ; 
no life is free from its mis-judgments and mistakes, 
and your criticism and mine may or may not have 
been just — but perhaps we would not have made it, 
or made it more gently, had we been able to realize 
for oiu'selves all the trying anxieties of his position. 

Yet it is one of the conditions of true greatness 
not to be dependent on prompt recognition or popular 
sympathy — to be content to labor and to wait. And 
he waited, as we see it now, with a magnanimous 
and wondrous patience. In the frequent and marked 
alternations of public feeling we have heard from 
him no murmur of complaint. And he is stricken 
down in the very hour when, without exception, and 



12 

without distinction of party, the sentiment of the 
whole country was clear in its recognition of his 
unswerving fidelity to his trust. Sweet, indeed, to 
Abraham LrffCOLif, would have been the cup which 
even now a grateful iiTation had lifted to his lips. It 
is not in human nature for even true greatness to 
be indifferent to the refreshment of popular favor 
after it has borne the heat and burden of the day. 
It can do without it, if necessary, but it is none the 
less welcome when it comes. What a tragic taking- 
off", then, was this ! 

But the fact that the President did not live to reap 
the full measure of the Illation's applause is not that 
which is most pathetic in his fate. It is but simple j us- 
tice to him to say that, far beyond all other thoughts, 
rose his pure and lofty patriotism. It is the endow- 
ment of large natures to be superior to personal con- 
siderations, and no one will deny that to the Presi- 
dent's heart the salvation of his country was far 
dearer than the appreciation of his countrymen. He 
had led her through trial unparalleled in her history. 
Upon him had fallen the cares of four such years as 
she had never known. And, at last, after all the 
harassing vicissitudes of war he saw upon the moun- 
tains the shining feet of the Messengers of Peace. 
But he saw them only from afar. Like another leader 



13 

of another people it was not permitted liim to pass 
over with his nation into the promised land. On the 
hither side his own steps were stayed. It was not 
given him to be the Chief Magistrate of a country 
once again at unity, concord, and peace. His own 
life was to complete that costly sacrifice which had 
been heaped up on her altars. A fate tragic and 
pathetic indeed ! 

He has passed into history. This is not the 
occasion or the place to vindicate or criticise the 
political principles that have marked his public life. 
IS'or, even if it were fitting, would it be possible to 
make any fair and impartial estimate of him as a 
statesman now. After death we see men more as 
they really are, yet in the first hours of his decease, 
we cannot adequately do justice to the memory of a 
great public man. Time alone can give him his true 
place in the world's history. The future historian of 
this war will be also the historian of Abraham 
LnsrcoLivr. When the films of misconception and 
passion and prejudice have passed away, when there 
remains not a vestige of those partizanships from 
which no man in his generation can be ever wholly 
free, when the coming years shall have determined 
beyond appeal the real character of every issue that 
has been involved in the struggle, when in the calm 



14 

vision which distance brings, men see things and 
events in their just relations and proportions — then, 
and not till then, will the true biography of the 
President be written. The truest life stands in 
the closest relation to the present and to the future. 
Every man who aspires to be a leader among his 
fellows must be not only an interpreter of his own 
age, but also a herald of the age which is to come. 
He is so linked with his race that these conditions 
are involved in his work in the world. To the coming 
generation, then, it belongs to determine what the 
work of this man has been. Posterity is just. 
History is impartial. We need not fear to leave the 
reputation of the lamented dead with them. In 
some respects they may reverse or modify our 
judgments, but whatever position is assigned him 
among the benefactors of mankind, we cannot doubt 
that it will be a great and honored one. 

But while not j)resuming to fix the position of the 
statesman, it is fitting that we should do homage to 
the personal worth and virtues of the man. That, 
at least, is a demand of the hour. It is not often 
that the pulpit can be used for a funeral eulogium. 
In this sacred place, where we come before God with 
the acknowledgment that we are all miserable 
sinners, one shrinks from anything that might seem 



15 

to savor of extravagance or adulatiou. AYe are 
reminded that the fairest hnman life, in God's sight, 
is not without its stain ; that it must fall infinitely 
short of that high ideal which the Gospel has set 
before us. In the presence of the Lord, and in His 
holy temple, we would utter no undeserved, or forced, 
or unreal words. Yet there are times when, even in 
God's house, the tribute of praise in the recognition 
of human worth, is not only permissible but just. 
When dignity of public station is united to loftiness 
and purity of character, the homage should not be 
uncertain or reluctant that is spoken here. And yet 
on this occasion I can scarcely find words large and 
strong enough to render it. I can do but poor, brief 
justice to my theme. 

How fully the moral virtues of the late President 
had commended themselves to the appreciation of 
his country, has its best witness in the unvarying tone 
of the popular press. I have looked in vain for any 
expression of detraction. The friends and the oppo- 
nents of his administration have vied with each other 
in generous tributes to his memory. There has been 
something strangely touching and inspiring in the 
spectacle of these few days past — a whole people for- 
getting all political differences to unite in the recog- 
nition of moral worth. The fact is too significant to 



16 

be overlooked, that the qualities of the lamented 
dead which are foremost upon every lip, and which 
there is found none to dispute, are his simple and 
unvarying goodness, his incorruptible integrity of 
character, his purity and straightforwardness of pur- 
pose. These are not the most dazzling qualities, yet 
they are those which endear a man to his fellows. 
When all is over, we fall back upon them as the ele- 
ments which must shape our estimate of his real 
worth. We admire brilliancy of intellect, but we 
have tears for the memory of the good. It is moral 
greatness which enshrines a man in the hearts of his 
countrymen, and vindicates at last its superiority to 
any other. And he was strong and patient ; firm, yet 
gentle ; just, but merciful. What that true, brave, 
earnest, unselfish life has been to the Nation in all 
these years of trial, perhaps we shall never fully know. 
Had his high trust been held by an unscrupulous and 
ambitious man, no imagination could picture all the 
horrors that might have been before us. But in 
the integrity of its Head, the Nation reposed with 
an implicit trust ; amid all the stormy passions and 
cloudy bewilderments of the time, that shone out 
like a guiding star. Honesty was the quality which, 
whether in praise or depreciation, was always asso- 
ciated with his name ; and, although honesty is not 



17 

all that is required of a leader, liistory is the witness 
that the most splendid endowments without that 
have never given to the world a life of true benefi- 
cence. An honest man, the poet says, is the noblest 
work of God ; and the minister of God can select no 
moral character more worthy of his eulogium. Yes, 
our President was a simple, good, and honest man. 
In him we have lost what we could ill afford to lose. 
He has been called the purest public man of his day ; 
and, however that may be, it is no disparagement to 
others to say that the death of Abraham Lincoln 
was an untimely death, an inscrutable dispensation of 
Providence, a great national disaster. We mourn for 
him as for an irreparable loss, as we have never 
mourned at the worst tidings of defeat. 

Nor is this all for which we have to mourn. There 
is another cause for mourning, in which shame mingles 
with grief. Our annals have been defaced by what 
before had been to them an unknown crime. The 
country has been shocked, absolutely stunned, by its 
commission. Treason and rebellious war^we had 
become familiar with. Even the wild barbarities of 
this strife we could find it in our hearts to pardon. 
But no man is found to palliate the assassin's foul 
and stealthy deed. I would not speak one word to 
stir in you any thought of vengeance. That were, 
3 



18 

indeed, unfitting here. Eage is cruel, and impotent, 
and blind ; and the worst that it could do would be 
as nothing in comparison with the guilt of the assas- 
sin. Let Justice hold the even tenor of her way, and 
let the Law exact the penalty of its own violation. 

But there is another penalty, awful, inexorable, 
remorseless, which has come upon that guilty soul 
already, and which every succeeding age will take up 
and confirm. Two men have just entered upon an 
earthly immortality : the one as a Martyr of Liberty, 
beloved, honored and lamented, the other as the 
greatest criminal of modern times, upon whom are 
heaped a nation's execrations. Time will never take 
that burden off. 

" The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, 
The mouths will add themselves and make the years, 
The years will roll into the centuries. 
And his will ever be a name of scorn " — 

Yes, forever a name of execration, infamy, and 
scorn. What an awful immortality is this ! To be 
pursued from generation to generation by a people's 
endless curse ; his very name a word of loathing even 
upon little children's lips ! For him, as for the first 
murderer of the world, is not his punishment greater 
indeed than he can bear ? 

But while we stand aghast before his crime, let us 
remember that it is but a fearful manifestation of 



19 

that same sin which is common to us all. This 
should be a day not merely of mourning, but of 
humiliation. The possibilities of murder are in 
every heart. The spirit of Cain is in the race, and at 
a word it may blossom into crime in you and me. 
We are bound together in a mysterious fellowship of 
good and evil. This criminal, outcast and outlaw 
though he be, may yet claim kindred with us in a sad 
brotherhood of sin. There is no evil done under the 
sun in which, remotely, we have not our share. While, 
therefore, we execrate the crime, let us not forget to 
mourn, with tears and penitence, that sinfulness in 
ourselves and in the world, which has made such 
crime possible. 

And with this thought we should be slow to charge 
complicity in it upon others. It is far too dreadful, 
too awful, too diabolical, for light or indiscriminate 
accusation. We would fain believe, even against evi- 
dence, if it must be, that no leader of the rebellion 
could incite or approve of such a damning deed. Still 
less should it embitter our feelings towards the people 
of the South. They have proved themselves desperate 
rebels and traitors, it is true, but they have proved 
also their gallantry on many a stricken field, and 
men who rush undaunted upon the cannon's mouth, 
and bare their naked breasts to the glittering steel, 
are not the men who make or countenance assassins. 



20 

I have already spoken of what seemed so tragic 
and pathetic in our President's death. How could it 
be otherwise than hard, after all this care, misrepre- 
sentation, and apparent defeat of fame, to be stricken 
down in the moment of his triumph, and in the hour 
of his country's awakening and grateful recognition? 
Yet, in another and deeper reference, his death was 
not so untimely as it seems. ]!:^ever, perhaps, could 
he have been better prepared to be summoned into 
the presence of his Maker. In Eepublics, as in 
Kingdoms, rulers reign by the grace of God. Their 
responsibility is not only to the people. There is 
another tribunal before which they must give account 
of their stewardship, and answer for the things that 
they have done. To that tribunal Abraham Lrsr- 
COLN has passed, not in an hour of pride, not in a 
mood of vindictiveness, not in the darkness of 
revenge ; but " when," in the eloquent tribute of a 
political opponent, "all his thoughts were concen- 
trated upon peace, and when his heart was full of 
purposes of mercy." Sic semper tyrannis! was the 
shout of the assassin, as he brandished his weapon 
before a horror stricken crowd after he had done that 
dastard deed. Ah! poor, counterfeit, and painted 
passion. Foul, false, and slanderous word ! It dims 
not the glory that settles on that bowed and bruised 
head ! Most merciful of victors, the world will never 



21 

couple " tyrant " with tlij^ name ! Tliine was not tlie 
ambition of a Csesar to purchase thy self-exaltation 
with thy country's loss ! The people of thy deliver- 
ance will sutfer no aspersion to rest upon thy fame, 
and in its indignant refutation history will lay the 
foundation of thy great renown ! 

IS^o! the reputation of the dead President is not 
stained by one single act of tyranny. If ever revenge 
may be excusable, it might have been in him. From 
the hour of his inauguration he had been engaged in 
a life and death struggle with the nation's foes, and 
sometimes the struggle seemed to go hard against 
him. Yet the moment the assurance of victory was 
unalterably his, he showed a true Christian magna- 
nimity, a marvelous and generous forbearance. In 
word or deed there is no trace of meditated vengeance. 
A true father of his country, he went forth with com- 
passion and tears and gladness to meet his erring 
but scarce repentant sons. And he himself was called 
into the presence of the Great Father " when all his 
thoughts were concentrated upon peace, and when 
his heart was full of purposes of mercy." Blessed 
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the 
children of God ; blessed are the merciful, for they 
shall obtain mercy. Let that be his epitaph ! We 
listen eagerly to catch a great man's dying words. 
But, in the hour before his death, the President was 



22 

silent and sad. And after the fatal messen^^er had 
sped, he died and made no sign. We must seek the 
moral of his life, not in a phrase, but in his crowning 
purpose of beneficence. The face, they say, after 
death, was clothed with a sweet and strange serenity. 
May we not believe that he who sought peace so 
earnestly, had found peace, yet not the peace he 
sought? The peace which the world cannot give. 
The peace that passeth understanding. The peace 
which is won through conflict, and which comes as 
the reward of faithfulness in that. The peace which 
Christ alone giveth. Such peace as He gave to His 
disciples, when, showing them His stricken side, and 
holding up His wounded hands, He said: ''My 
peace I give unto you ! " 

Brethren, how can we better honor the memory of 
the dead than in the reflection of his own great 
charity — the fulfillment of his own beneficent de- 
signs? This is no hour for muttered vengeance. 
This is no time for ruthless retribution. It would be 
a stroke more cruel even than the blow of the assas- 
sin to inaugurate a reign of terror with his burial, 
and offer a holocaust of human victims at his tomb. 
Peace and Mercy ! is not this the legacy, the watch- 
word he has left us, with which to go forth and meet 
a vanquished, yet kindred, foe ? Such mercy as may 



23 

be consistent with the safety of the Republic ; and 
such jieace as may lay deep and broad again the 
foundation for a free, restored, and reunited People. 
And in our bereavement, let us not forget to dis- 
cern the finger of God, to recognize His Fatherly 
correction. It requires no little effort to bring our- 
selves to think of our aflliction thus. Our first and 
almost irresistible impulse is to view it simply as an 
unmitigated disaster. Yet there is no failure and no 
loss in the economy of the infinite Wisdom. AVe 
cannot doubt that in the permission of that deed God 
had a wise and far-reaching puri)Ose. We cannot 
tell what it may be, but we know that it is always 
His to overrule evil for good. Perhaps it was to 
chasten, in these first hours of triumph, a too arro- 
gant and exultant joy. Perhaps it was to secure us 
from the immoderation of victory, and lead us to wait 
humbly upon that Providence from whom all victory 
comes. Perhaps it was to deepen our devotion to 
our country, by this final and crowning sacrifice 
which the preservation of her integrity has cost. It 
would seem that the nation must grow as does the 
church, from the seed sown in the martyr's blood. 
That this visitation has softened men's hearts 
strangely, we ourselves can see. Kot since the com- 
mencement of this sad war has there been such unity 



24 

of feeling. It is no partizan spirit that has draped 
the land in habiliments of woe. Party lines and 
animosities seem for the time to have ceased, and 
we are again a great people, reunited in a great grief. 
Let the pm-e, unselfish patriotism of the honored 
dead be unto us a lesson teaching by example ! Let 
it animate and inspire us! Let us cherish in our 
hearts, and strive to realize in our lives, a true 
Christian patriotism — not merely the patriotism 
which is a civic virtue, but the patriotism which is a 
religious duty ! May we grow in faith and love and 
devotion to the Nation. May we hold it as the 
goodly heritage which we have received from our 
fathers, and which we are to transmit to our children. 
May ours be the cheerful, willing, holy self-sacrifice, 
if for further sacrifice there should be any call, which 
should become the Christian patriot, which should 
belong to the Christian citizen. In jjrayer, and the 
strength which comes of prayer, we may do the work 
that has been given us to do. Then shall this fair 
land, this continent guarded by the mountains and 
girded by the seas, become the heritage of our 
children and of our children's children — its laws 
respected, its authority inviolate, the integral unity 
of its territory unimpaired, stable in the righteous- 
ness that exalteth a nation, and under the majesty of 



25 

a flag which droops upon no tield — symbol of power 
and purity — the home of Freedom, the home of 
Justice, and the home of Peace ! 

As for our dead President, his work is done. Oare 
shall furrow brow and cheek no more. That great 
heart is bowed no longer beneath the affliction of his 
people. The long weariness is over and past. The 
sad face is calm and still and untroubled now. Even 
as we speak they are bearing him to the long home 
and the narrow house — they are reading at the 
Nation's Capital the burial service for the dead — 
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust ; 
looking for the general Eesurrection and the life of 
the world to come. Yes! the life of the world to 
come. Let us comfort one another with these words ! 
Not vainly do these yet unwithered Easter flowers 
hold their place amidst all the drapery of grief. 
They symbolize an immortal hope, the triumi^h over 
death and the resurrection from the dead. The 
faithful servant, we may trust, hath entered into 
the joy of his Lord. Let us leave him to his rest — 

the blessedness of them who rest from their labors ! 
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